Elise came to consciousness wondering what had happened, then knowing but hardly believing it. This is the guy Jenkins was supposed to recruit? The softhearted special operator who would help us with a minimum of trouble, who would be grateful, who could be controlled?
Then why do I hurt so damn much?
First thing the stench hit her, blood and her own body stink mixed with the surreally mundane odors of soap and shower gel. A shampoo bottle lay shattered by her arm, its gooey contents a puddle on the shower floor. Well, might as well make it useful. She reached over, scooping the stuff onto her hands and then rubbing it into her medium-length auburn hair. Rolling over, she got painfully to her feet.
She saw her clothes were torn and so was the nylon cloth that covered the heavy Kevlar vest. The bulletproof helmet she had worn showed a couple of scars as well. Good thing; that saved my life. Eden or not, bullets in the brain tend to be fatal.
Eden. She laughed to herself. The one and only, the first. Call me Eve. If they’ll only let me find my Adam. I’d thought it might be Daniel Markis. Little chance now.
Reaching out, she turned on the water in the shower, letting the hot soothing liquid run over her clothed body. It still felt wonderful. She lathered up her hair, then awkwardly used the soap to wash off what she could of the blood and fluids as she waited for Jenkins to make his recruiting pitch.
Silence wrapped him as Markis stood there, and he suddenly felt dizzy, ice cold, drenched in sweat. Numbly he reached over, bumped the thermostat up a couple of degrees, leaned against the wall. Listened to the silence. Mostly silence. The serpent still gibbered in his hindbrain. Too many chemicals, he knew. Steroids and painkillers and speed, and they had betrayed him this time.
But he heard something else. A rushing sound, not the forced air of the heating system either. Water. It sounded like the shower in the basement was on. Had a pipe broken? Did one of his rounds damage something?
Reloading automatically, he retraced his steps back down to the basement. No way that guy – sorry, that woman – got up. No way, after the mess I made of her.
The serpent in his head slithered forward again, eager.
Edging around the bottom of the stairs, Markis glided forward with all the stealth he could muster and slipped back to his position in the unfinished part of the basement, behind the thin wall with its sixteen or so holes. Yes, the shower was running, and something moved within. Several of the rounds had gone right through the tile and now the water was soaking back, drizzling through the holes.
What the hell?
He waited, took up a position behind the crack of the door, and waited some more. It took several minutes but finally a figure came out of the shower, out of the bathroom. It looked to him like she had rinsed with her clothes on, to get rid of the blood and filth, but amazingly she was up and walking around. Toweling off. Not fast; she moved haltingly, like an old woman, or a hurt one. With an exotic-looking weapon by the barrel in one hand, she dangled a Kevlar helmet from the same wrist, and dragged a mangled vest. Five or six scars showed where his rounds had hit the armor and helmet and not penetrated.
So I tagged her, but didn’t kill her after all? But I fired sixteen rounds, and I smelled the stink of the body letting go, which normally only happens at the moment of death. At least some of her legs and arms should be out of commission, but she’s using all of them. One, two, three, four. Yup, all four limbs operating.
Weird.
Markis stepped out from behind the door while her back was still mostly to him. “Freeze, you.”
She dropped everything, held her hands up away from her body. “Don’t shoot, please. It hurts.”
“I bet. Turn around. All the way around. Keep turning.”
He inspected her. No visible weapons, just torn up slacks and a ragged button-down blouse, with holes and rips in interesting places and still some bloodstains. Angry red wounds on her arms and legs, at least five that he could see. Spreading purple bruises. Cute, too, about five-six, reddish-brown hair, gorgeous blue eyes, nice curves under all that mess.
She was standing, she was walking. Somehow. Woman or not, she had fired a very deadly firearm at him. The gun didn’t care who used it, and dead was dead.
Wasn’t it?
The serpent in Markis’s head was not pleased.
“Turn right, go up the stairs. Don’t think about it, just do it. Up, up!” He followed her ascent, déjà vu, just like with the suit. He marched her through the kitchen and told her to sit next to the suit’s body.
The woman looked at the dead man, at the entry wounds, and made a choking sound. Stringy and wet, her hair did not hide a face ugly with bruises and what looked like a shot through her cheek.
Markis snarled, “I tried to talk to him. He gave me the wrong answers.” Looking at her, he tried to be dispassionate, but still liked what he saw: average build but fit and perfectly proportioned. His eyes traced the contours of her form and something stirred within him as his baser instincts threatened to take control.
The serpent was pleased.
Markis shook himself. What’s wrong with me? Reaching inside for the anger, he used it to regain his balance. Remember, this woman tried to kill me. The body reaches for sex after violent action, the urge to procreate, but I swore off all of that when…he pushed painful thoughts away again and concentrated.
In a field interrogation it was useful for the subject to be afraid, to keep from recovering composure. Markis figured he needed to push this woman through that window. Besides, she had genuine reason to fear him. The serpent hovered behind his eyeballs, threatening to take over again at any moment.
Markis spoke. “So tell me, and make it fast. I really want to shoot you again.” It came out in a croon, husky, like a lover. He placed his finger on the trigger again and the serpent danced in the dexe-codone fog.
“Okay, okay, please don’t,” she tried to reason with him. “We’re here to help you. Recruit you! Come on, Daniel, throttle back!” She shivered from the cold and the fear.
Markis could see in her eyes that she was confused. Obviously the situation hadn’t gone the way they expected. “How do you know me?” he growled.
She spoke quickly, perhaps hoping to keep him distracted until he relaxed. “Jenkins had your file! It’s true! You fit the profile, all the skills, high moral index, ruthless but not corruptible, the Company wants you. But it’s going to be harder now.” She made a weak gesture at the dead man beside her, avoiding looking.
“The Company” is what the CIA’s employees call it, like it isn’t even part of the government. Maybe it isn’t, really, Markis thought.
“Please, we can help each other.” She sounded unsure, but hopeful, and took a deep breath.
Markis saw she was settling down; he needed to keep her momentum going in the direction of explanations. He gestured with the gun. “Keep talking. What was the plan?”
She responded quickly, trippingly. “Jenkins was in charge – I had no choice. I was just supposed to provide the demonstration, which I did, as you see. I couldn’t kill you anyway, even if I wanted to, but you were supposed to think so, to get your attention.”
He wondered what she meant by “couldn’t kill” him. Seemed like she could have if he’d been in front of the shotgun.
Elise reached across with her right hand to scratch vigorously at her left arm, where one of the bullets had taken out a chunk of flesh. She looked pleadingly at Markis, as if willing him to understand, to give her a break. “I tried to talk him out of it but he was an arrogant son of a bitch and he wouldn’t listen.”
Which reminded him. “So how come you aren’t dead, or at least bleeding out on my bathroom floor? How come you’re still on your feet?” This whole conversation was surreal, but he couldn’t argue with his own two eyes so he figured he might as well just go with it until he figured it out. “Are you some kind of vampire? Werewolf? Immortal? Alien? Zombie?” He ran out of possibilities.
She continued her explanation, even as she clutched her gut, as if in pain. “It’s a new thing. A kind of healing booster. Do you have anything to eat?”
Markis noticed she was looking sallow, white almost, and shivering. It seemed like she was getting sick, and her veins and muscle definition showed through paper-thin skin.
“I’m starving,” she pleaded again.
His stimulated mind raced, and he threw mental rocks at the serpent reluctantly slouching back toward its cave. Healing booster, super-healing. When she said starving, she meant literally starving. From his extensive medical training Markis figured that her body was already catabolizing itself, cannibalizing at the cellular level, trying to heal those wounds. Biology can’t be outrun: healing takes energy and materials, no matter how advanced the drug or technique. And he needed this woman for answers, and maybe to keep him out of an Agency cell. He’d brushed up against the spooks Over There, and he had no desire to be “rendered.”
Funny, how similar the two meanings of that word ended up being. One, to be boiled down to fatty paste. Two, to be given over to a foreign country to be tortured.
So he got her some food. A big bag of lunch meat, a package of cheese slices, mayo, mustard, a loaf of bread, apples, paper plates, and a plastic spoon. A plastic cup for orange juice. No metal. Dad didn’t raise no dummy. Used right, a steel spoon can kill a man. I’ve already seen she’s dangerous, no matter how attractive she might be. That was part of the plan, probably. Even with that wet stringy hair he couldn’t stop thinking about her eyes. “Make me a sandwich too,” He said gruffly, not wanting to put down the gun. “And keep talking. What’s your name, anyway?”
“Elise. Elise Wallis.” She lined up six pairs of bread slices with shaky hands and started to construct sandwiches, after stuffing a piece of the loaf into her mouth like a slumdog orphan. Taking a moment to choke it down, she continued. “It was just supposed to be a demonstration. You were supposed to shoot me, of course. Not quite so many times. And I didn’t really shoot at you, did I? Those rounds I had were filled with salt. Not even rock salt, just table salt. Nasty within five feet, but after that it just stings. Special ammo. It’s in his pocket in a plastic bag. See for yourself.” She sounded whiny, defensive. Querulous.
Markis laughed tightly. “Well, that didn’t work out so well. And now some poor arrogant tailored-suit schmuck is dead. I guess he didn’t have the super-healing. Why not? Experimental? Some kind of side effects? Doesn’t work on everyone?” His mind was racing now, the adrenaline and the problem keeping him on track. It felt good, to be firing on all cylinders again.
Outrunning the serpent.
“Yeah, there’s a downside, mostly for the Company.” She finished making the sandwiches, pushed one across the table to him, and demolished another in four bites.
Markis had to wait for her to keep talking anyway, so he took a cautious bite. Too much mustard. The woman looked into his eyes then, with a kind of haunted compassion or…something. Something hard to pin down. Maybe pity. He liked the eyes but he didn’t much like that expression, and he resolved he wasn’t going to fall for her sneaky womanly wiles, but there was still something in her that attracted him. Maybe it was because she had guts. In some other circumstances…
She kept eating. Kept staring at him.
Dragging his mind back to the now, he barked, “Come on, talk between bites.” Markis still felt on the ragged edge of control, and his weapon hand started shaking.
She stared at the gun and those shakes and said, “All right. Just let me tell it my own way, okay?”
Another quarter of a sandwich went down her throat. She finished a cup of juice, poured herself some more. “I was a terminal patient. Cancer. Hodgkin’s. I had maybe two weeks to live. I was already in hospice, doped up. The Company made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Be a test subject for a new cure, they told me. Of course I said yes.”
She paused to eat another sandwich, and as she did she watched him fidget impatiently, watched his flickering eyes.
She’s worried about me, Markis realized. Thinks I’m losing it. But I’m not. He thought she was looking much better now, and her wounds were visibly shrinking. The bruising was getting smaller, the holes were closing, everything. His eyes moved all over her body, watching it happen. Unbelievable. But he had to believe it. It was right in front of him.
As he took the last bite of his sandwich the woman across from him sighed, as if regretting something. The next second he found himself falling over backward as the dining room table flew up in his face. He forced his finger not to pull the trigger in reflex, and by the time he disentangled himself from the chair, table, tablecloth and sandwich makings, she was gone.
Story of my life. The good ones always leave.